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Two US equity trading platforms have expanded their European operations putting further pressure on the incumbent exchanges as other venues have launched in the region and gained market share.

LiquidNet, a US company that provides a dark pool—an undisplayed market for trading equities—has hired Pinar Emirdag as head of corporate strategy at Liquidnet Europe. She is based in London, reporting to Alfred Eskandar, global head of corporate strategy and John Barker, managing director, Liquidnet Europe.

Emirdag was previously a director at Citigroup equities for two years and moved to London in 2006 where she was responsible for strategic business development opportunities, and investments and partnerships around electronic trading.

Before moving to London she spent three years in New York as head of strategy for Lava Trading, the cash and derivatives dealing systems provider bought by the bank in 2004.

LiquidNet has filed for a $500m (€319m) initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission led by Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. In its filing last month, Liquidnet said international revenues have risen fivefold in the past three years.

The SEC filing said that in 2005 LiquidNet’s international revenues were $9.7m, 6% of the firm’s total, and had grown to $52.6m, or 15.2%, by last year.

At the end of May, LiquidNet had 269 members trading European securities, 223 members trading Canadian equities and 107 trading Asian and Australian stocks. In 2002, LiquidNet had 24 members trading European securities.

Another trading platform, Bats Trading, an electronic communications network that has received regulatory approval to become an authorized exchange in the US, said it has made significant progress in its plans to launch its European platform in November.

Bats has named Eric Crampton, who joined the firm earlier this year, as head of software development for European markets and opened a new office in London.

In addition Turquoise, the trading company owned by nine investment banks, launched in Europe last week and said that it completed a productive and successful first full week of trading having opened for business in a "soft launch" on Friday, August 15.

The conclusion of Turquoise's first week came as Chi-X, a rival system that launched in March last year, reached record trading volumes on Friday, the first example of a substantial market share of European equity trading moving away from the incumbent national exchanges.

Chi-X, which is majority owned by Japanese bank Nomura, traded 22.3% of the main British index, 19.3% of Dutch stocks, 16.7% of French names and 14.7% of the leading German index.

Turquoise and Chi-X are just two systems that have launched to take advantage of European Commission rules that took effect in November last year. Transatlantic exchange Nasdaq OMX is set to launch a rival system next month.